RACING AT OPUNAKE

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 21 February 1935, Page 9

RACING AT OPUNAKE

Early History of the Coastal Club

POPULAR PICNIC MEETING

ANNUAL FIXTURE NEXT WEEK

Before the depression there was probably no more powerful country racing club of its size in New Zealand than at Opunake. The club’s one-day annual meeting outvied in popularity many of the larger clubs, and at one time it was probably the best known picnic gathering in the Dominion. In the early days people from various parts of the province used* 1 to make the Opunake meeting a real day s outing. Starting early in the morning, it was the custom of the settlers to venture forth in their buggies, traps and various vehicles, and to arriye at Opunake several hours before the races, while their departure at the conclusion of the meeting - was often delayed until late that night or the following morning. Even after the advent of the motor-car this citstom was kept up for a long period, and it is only in the last six or seven jears since the advent of the faster style of automobiles and the running of trains to Pihama that the practice really died out. Even the owners and trainers used to send their horses out by the good old-fashioned method of walking, and the sight of the thoroughbreds in groups of threes and fours on the morning of, or the day previous to the races, was to the people on the wayside farms a spectacle secondary only to the meeting itself. . Unfortunately those days are now but memories, and journeys to and from Pihama are the matter of an hour or so only. The club’s annual meeting will be held again next Wednesday, when good fields are carded for the seven events.